Anyone with a sufficient grasp of reality might well feel a twinge of paranoia at the pattern of current events. The best way to counteract it is to seek solutions that alleviate the helplessness that often accompanies such a state. Preparing for the worst, som ...

We have been fairly straightforward about our belief there is something fishy as regards the price of gold and silver. We think in a normal environment the price would have gone higher, and sooner. Of course such a suspicion demands a motive. The motive, fairly ...

From a free-market perspective, the above remarks reaffirm what we already understand to be true about precious metals: in a bear market, with all its attendant anxieties, gold and silver often thrive. Bear markets are inherently difficult from an emotional sta ...

It is hard to keep track of all the international organizations these days. Once upon a time, the United Nations was going to provide a central forum for these sorts of activities, but no more, apparently. The UN, perhaps because of endless corruption, has appa ...

For some reason, it is widely accepted within the mainstream media that Barack Obama shall bring a sense of reason and purpose to responses to the economic crisis. He is meeting with people reputed to be at the top of the economic field, and the idea is that t ...

The idea that Barack Obama will be more friendly to the European Union is fairly discouraging. There is nothing very democratic about the EU these days, with its constant electoral do-overs and endless striving for the attributes of a nation state. There is als ...

The victory of Barack Obama is being presented in the mainstream media as a resounding affirmation for Obama's slogan of "change." While no one is absolutely sure of what "change" entails, one might offer with some certainty the idea that the vote that propelle ...

In truth, George W. Bush's record is one of militant government activism. He used every lever of federal government machinery to build a legacy featuring a public debt over $10 trillion, two hot wars and several more cold ones, a dysfunctional, national educati ...

Putin joins Chinese leaders in demanding a change in the international financial scene. But it is not clear what he means by this. The Chinese, perhaps, are slightly clearer, having called for more regulation and a decreased role for the dollar. Putin apparentl ...

This subject can be made complex, but it is really quite simple. Here at the Daily Bell, we've been commenting on it for months, but now a spate of articles have hit the hard-money and alternative 'net press predicting that fairly significant events will occur ...

It is fairly obvious to anyone who reads a lick that central banks and fiat money are the most responsible for the endless blowups that afflict Western, and now world, economies. And the blow ups constantly seem to get worse. In America the first real blow up c ...

Everything is OK now? The Dow roared up an almost impossible 10 percent yesterday, purportedly on news of an expected rate cut by the Fed. All this is fairly cynical in our opinion. Between basic money generation and rate cuts (credit generation), the amount of ...

It is just astonishing that the IMF is creeping back into the picture in a big way. The IMF is putatively supposed to help countries that have spent too much money and are in danger of going broke. Of course, once upon a time, such countries were third world. T ...

China looks out for its own. But this time the old men who run the place may be feeling a tad snookered. Yes, it would seem the dragon is stirring. (See next article as well.) It could be that China's leaders see a chance to flex their muscles, or it could be t ...

What a load of hooey. Do you really think that Greenspan was surprised by the current speculative bubble? Do you still think he had no idea? He writes as a young man, The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-tri ...

Actually, this is not merely "infighting" but yet another historical opportunity to watch the conflict between socialism and republicanism. For Switzerland is probably as close to a functional republic as the Western world has now that America has dropped out o ...

It's fascinating to watch tomorrow's history being written today. When it comes to the financial crisis, one can see the meme being constructed – capitalism fails and socialist/Fabian-ist John Maynard Keynes makes a comeback. Government is useful after all .. ...

The leftist Guardian can't help itself of course. These plans have been circulating for months, for years, probably. Those behind them just needed one big, fat crisis. And now they have one. And they are licking their lips. Certainly Jeffrey Sachs is. One of th ...

It is hard to see through the vagueness to exactly what is being called for, but no doubt whatever takes place will do nothing to address the root cause of the current economic crisis. Those who are most forceful in calling for "reform" – whatever that is – ...

Being part of a publishing company based in Switzerland, we doubt the average citizen is going to be especially pleased with what is going on in its storied banking business. The Swiss are an industrious people to be sure, but above all what Switzerland provide ...

Actually, it is starting to seem as if Bernanke will say virtually anything to sound like he knows what he is doing. But what he's saying seems to get increasingly bizarre. Alan Greenspan, Bernanke's predecessor was always talking about asset bubbles (even if h ...

The kind of soft socialism that has been ushered in with the latest and most expansive US government involvement in the private sector is un-American in a fundamental sense. If one subscribes to the idea that America was once the world's most powerful and produ ...

One would not have predicted years ago that the current American administration would be taking $125 billion-plus position in America's largest investment banks (eventually, we will see how much it really is), and dictating the terms as well. That this is takin ...

Thanks to the current credit crisis, which is actually a crisis of Western "fiat" money, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has seemingly made a comeback in popular opinion. Popular opinion had previously been running heavily against Brown, who succeeded the increa ...

Evans-Pritchard is one of the better mainstream economic commentators, and he has been hitting the economic crisis hard. He certainly has hard-money sympathies, and he has written on one occasion or another that the only currency worth owning right now is bulli ...

As part of what we hope could be considered a public service, we continue to report on calls for ever deeper and more invasive regulatory fixes, worldwide. These efforts are usually accompanied by melancholy protestations of sincerity. And the breast-beating an ...

From farce to tragedy? This is what happens when free-markets are overtaken by uncontrolled cronyism and corruption. A 35-year-old gets tapped to run a US$700 billion bailout fund that is supposed to save the American economy and thus the world's financial syst ...

A funny thing happened on the way to a commodity collapse. Gold went up. As part of the endless attack on money metals by the monetary elite, the idea that gold and silver are "commodities" has been another arrow in the quiver of honest-money negativity. But go ...

We began to predict calls long ago for more international regulation based on the current "financial crisis." Our perception of what was bound to occur has indeed come true in various regions. Take the United States. Here, the Democrats have been gearing up for ...

It must be great for those of the "Swiss persuasion" who identify with large banks to see that UBS is back on track. Everything sounds really good. After a loss of only US$43 billion, the great Swiss bank has turned the corner. Its management expects it to be p ...

Global capital flows have indeed transformed the American economy, and other Western economies as well. But where do these capital flows come from? Watching the American debate over the economy has been dispiriting because even with the addition of the recent L ...

Except what is "good " for some may not be good for all, or even many. The contraction of banking in the United States proceeds apace with that country's largest banks merging one after the other. What is most fascinating about the consolidation is that it begi ...

We are pleased to present the above excerpt because it dovetails neatly with a point we made recently - that there is probably no question now that precious metals markets are highly manipulated and that this ongoing manipulation will eventually render these ma ...

It has long been our contention that the world remains on a de facto gold and silver standard, even if many of the people in it don't understand the reality of the money they use. This money is supposedly guaranteed by the "full faith and credit" of the state. ...

e wrote about how Europeans seemed a little smug recently when being quoted about the problems in the US. What the problems come down to, in our estimation, is that the Federal Reserve carried on with a loose money policy for so long that it created a euphoria ...

US President Bush hit the airwaves last night to hype the administration's $700 billion bailout of America's largest financial firms. He spent a good deal of time explaining the reason why the nation was in the fix it is in. He explained that a large influx of ...

The avalanche of finger-pointing has begun and will not cease for several decades, if then. But the above excerpt is from an article that is among the best of the most recent crop, in that it actually attacks the Federal Reserve rather than "greed" or "Wall Str ...

On and on, high finance will go. OK, maybe. But one thing is fairly certain: The frustration of America's lenders will go on and on. The Chinese alone are on the hook for something like a trillion dollars of American Treasurys. In fact, you would think some of ...

Goodness, it didn't take very long to realize our prediction that the current debacle would be used as a way to further "globalize" domestic financial systems, especially America's. And so long as we're keeping track (and we do), we wish note once more, as we h ...

In a free market, participants would be free to buy or sell securities as they wished. Patently, as we have learned once again in the past weeks and months, the securities marketplace is not "free" and in fact is basically a kind of colony of the American Feder ...

It didn't make sense to us that gold and silver would be lapsing into a bear market, given both the amount of money that central banks are throwing at the markets and the amount of nervousness as well. And while yesterday's price action might be aberrant, we wo ...

We are big fans of Dr. Gary North, and this is an interesting article that we have excerpted above. Dr. North now seems to believe that the best days of the gold (and silver) bull market may be past and that the future holds only gradual deflation. Wow. That's ...

Some win, some lose – and Wall Street will continue. Because Wall Street is in such flux, this first article will focus on the proverbial "big picture." (That's why you read The Bell after all, isn't it?) In fact, whether firm X is purchased, or firm Y is "sa ...

Thanks to Fortune for this insightful analysis. We just don't buy it. For us, Wall Street was always something of a dream, a sometimes languid and sometimes frenetic slumber ongoing for a very long time – longer than we have been around – nearly a century. ...

There is no doubt that the Russians are angry with the way the United States has acted within a "unipolar" world. First the Clinton administration and then the Bush administration have pursued wars near Russia while trying to woo countries that have traditional ...

You can argue as many do that central banking is a benign and necessary activity. Our take is that central banking is a destructive force because central bankers never know how much money is too much. And because the central bank always prints too much money, i ...

Sorry to return to the Fannie and Freddie bailout once again, but the totality of mortgages held by these two monsters is in excess of $6 trillion. The United States, in taking over these "companies" has basically socialized a major portion of its internal mark ...

And so the myth of the savvy banker rolls on. You would think after decades of implosions, bankruptcies and general mayhem around the world that bankers might offer up a little humility alongside the inevitable gravitas. But such is not the case. These bankers ...

What free market ideology? The United States has a $3 trillion federal budget, a national debt the size of a black hole and a graduated income tax that drains wealth from the middle class (mostly) for the benefit of the wealthy. That Fannie and Freddie are to b ...

There is probably never a single good reason for equities in America or elsewhere to go either up or down. Trying to attribute a single, neat reason is a little like attributing a particular emotion or reason to "national will." Having said this, there are cert ...